medical debt

About 26 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 64 struggle to pay their medical bills. That is 52 million people who don’t know how they will cover the costs of simply maintaining their health. If you feel like you’re drowning in your medical debt, there are places that help with bills. Let’s take a look.

Places That Help With Bills

Searching for places that will help you pay your medical bills is easier than you’d think. In fact, there are usually quite a few local organizations that will be happy to help you back on your feet. Some will even provide personal financial counseling to ensure you don’t find yourself up to your neck in debt again. Below are a few places you may want to reach out to if you’re having trouble keeping up with medical bills.

Churches

Local churches are known to help people out with just about anything. They will often lend a helping hand with housing, transportation, food, and, on occasion, they will also help you pay medical debt. This usually only applies if you attend the church regularly. However, if you know someone within the church, it is possible to receive some help that way too.

Crisis Assistance Ministry

Not every city has a Crisis Assistance Ministry. However, if your city does, it’s one of the few places that help with bills. Crisis Assistance doesn’t just help you pay bills either. They help you get back on track by providing counseling to ensure that once you have recovered, you don’t end up in the position again. On top of helping with medical bills, they also help with food, transportation, and housing, as well as job placement.

Government Assistance

There are some government programs that can assist you in paying your medical bills. The U.S. government has programs to assist with paying utilities, prescriptions, and telephones. It is important to note, however, that you will need to meet certain criteria to receive this assistance. In most cases, you need to have income 135 percent or less than the federal poverty guidelines.

Salvation Army

Helping meet basic needs is the entire goal behind the Salvation Army. Although they may not be able to help pay your bills in every instance, they are a great organization to reach out to if you are in need.

Local Action Agencies

Most of these are small non-profit organizations that help with paying different bills, food, and basic necessities. These are often like Crisis Assistance or similar organizations. Search for non-profits in your area to see what may be available.

The 2-1-1 Program

United Way offers a 2-1-1 program that helps individuals locate the help they need in their immediate area. This service is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Learn more about the 2-1-1 program here.

Final Thoughts

Each of the organizations listed above are places that help with bills, food, transportation, housing, rehabilitation, and more. If you’re ever in need, don’t feel like you are alone. These organizations were put in place to help YOU (and others) when you’re in need. Don’t hesitate to get assistance.

If you’re looking for some additional suggestions and personal finance advice, head on over to the Saving Advice forums.

One of the offshoots of the Occupy Wall Street movement which has had a direct impact on individual lives is Strike Debt. This arm of the movement had a unique idea which has actually worked. The movement formed an entity to buy up peoples’ debt that had gone to collection, but instead of trying to recover the debt as debt collecting agencies do, they simply forgave it.

The Strike Debt project began toward the end of 2012 when it started to purchase the medical debt for thousands of people. Since that time, the project has managed to purchase over $18 million worth medical debt and forgiving it, so those who had the debt no longer had it hanging over their heads.

This year the Strike Debt decided to focus on private student loan debt. Part of the reason they focused on private student loans rather than the federally backed government loans most students take out to finance their education at at not-for-profit colleges. The group explained this in a statement saying, “While medical debt is widely available to debt collectors on secondary markets, most student debt is not, because it is guaranteed by the federal government and cannot be erased in bankruptcy.”

Even though they were limited to the private student loan debt, they ended up getting pretty amazing results. The Strike Debt group purchased $3.8 million worth of the student loan debt for just over $100,000. This helped to relieve the debt of nearly 3,000 people who had a private student loan which had gone into collections.

Strike Debt doesn’t claim their system will be able to eliminate student debt, but it’s a way to raise awareness of the issue and to come up with ways to change the system. As a project coordinator said, “We can’t solve the entire problem, but we can help along the way while trying to fix the systemic problem.”

The Debt Collective

While buying up debt and forgiving that debt has been the hallmark of Strike Debt up until this point, they are looking to expand the project. They will continue to buy debt and forgive it, but the next step they’re taking is called The Debt Collective. This is a website they hope to organize to unite individuals with debt to give them collective bargaining power to help get better terms on the debt they owe.

With this project, anyone with debt can sign up on the website, and enter the amount of debt, the type of debt and where in the US they live. As more and more people sign up, groups will form which will work on ideas on how all the individuals in that group can work together to bargain as a group against lenders rather than as individuals. By bargaining as a group, the individuals have a stronger position in the bargaining than they would as an individual on their own.